Voice of the people (letter).

Defending The Marine Corps

WASHINGTON — It is sad that the memory of losing liberty in 1971 is still so hurtful to John McCarron that it drove him to single-handedly try and convict the entire United States Marine Corps in "Cleaning up after the Marines is no fun" (Commentary, March 8). Using 30-year-old crimes or even more recent egregious activities by individuals to smear an entire institution with 223 years of faithful service to this nation is abhorrent.

In his haste to use every Marine misdeed known to him to pillage the Corps, Mr. McCarron has missed the real story. The real story begins with 26,000 Marines who are forward deployed today away from family and friends in the name of national security. In the last year alone, these Marines rescued American citizens from civil unrest in Eritrea; conducted humanitarian relief in Kenya, Haiti, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua; provided security forces for the Panama Canal Zone, Albania and in the wake of terrorist bombings in Africa; and participated in operations in the Balkans, the Middle East and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.

The story continues with Marines experimenting in urban warfare on the West Coast, learning the new procedures, tactics and techniques that will help them fight and win our country's 21st Century battles. It moves to the streets of our towns and cities where Marine recruiters work seven days a week to make their mission. From there it goes to our recruit depots where Marine drill instructors transform the best this nation has to offer into Marines--Marines who, despite occasional transgressions, are imbued with our core values of honor, courage and commitment. And it ends at every base where good Marines work long hours attempting to keep old equipment at the ready for the next call to action.

As to human development, the Marine Corps has made substantial changes to the way we recruit and train Marines to ensure we start with the people of the highest caliber and then help them develop their character. We have increased our quality standards for enlistment beyond those required by the Department of Defense. We have increased the length of our recruit training, allowing for additional training on core values, integrity, personal accountability and individual responsibility. We added a 54-hour final test called the Crucible, which challenges each recruit mentally, physically and morally. Finally we have re-energized our junior officers and enlisted leadership to ensure they set high standards for their Marines and hold those found lacking accountable.

We did not make these changes just to ensure that Marines behave on liberty. We made them to prepare Marines to fight and win on the future battlefield. It will be a chaotic battlefield where Marines will go from humanitarian and peacekeeping duties to highly lethal combat in a very short period of time. It will be a scenario where the people they were helping to feed suddenly become the enemy. It is a situation where they will be called upon to make ethical, life-and-death choices in the execution of their duties, and the wrong decision could be very costly. In this environment, making the right ethical choices must be a thing of habit, and that is why we have made these changes. Unfortunately no matter how successful our efforts we will never be able to reach every individual, and Marines will still do things that run counter to our core values.